Leigh Rubin is an American cartoonist. He began his cartooning career in 1978 by establishing his own greeting card company, Rubes Publications, featuring early renditions of his animal characters. Then he designed a popular greeting card series with characters having the shape of musical notes and published it as his first cartoon collection, Notable Quotes, in 1981. NMRH7SQEBAEW

His first serious collaboration with newspapers started in 1984. His friend was the editor of Antelope Valley Press in Palmdale (California, US). He asked Rubin about writing a daily comic for the newspaper. Now Leigh’s cartoons can be found in more than 400 newspapers worldwide.

In 2009 Leigh celebrated the 25th anniversary of Rubes® with the publication of The Wild and Twisted World of Rubes, a “best of” collection which contains 240 of his personal favourites out of over 9,500 cartoons.

Today we are going to see the official playing card deck featuring wacky cow cartoons from the twisted world of Leigh – Rubes Playing Cards (Rubes® is a registered trademark of Leigh Rubin).

The deck: 52 playing cards with different cartoons + 2 Jokers. Poker size. The deck is manufactured and distributed under license by Aquarius. Playing cards were printed (in China) on cardboard and have some kind of an embossed finish (looks like linen).

Jokers are almost the same. One is coloured and the other one is black & white. Leigh in a fool’s cap is depicted on both of them. An interesting morphing effect was applied to Jokers – the picture of Leigh transforms from photorealistic to drawn one.

All playing cards have different cartoons by Leigh Rubin. Backs are one way and feature a cow with some crazy chicken on its head, the name of the deck and Leigh’s signature in the right bottom corner.

all pictures are clickable

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